


in 48 hours

by khalasaar



Series: in two days [2]
Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: F/F, haha this is ugly!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 07:44:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9809846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/khalasaar/pseuds/khalasaar
Summary: “Stay another day here. We could go the beach this time, or hiking. Bodega Bay. Oakland, if getting murdered wouldn’t ruin your day. Los Angeles. Disneyland. San Francisco. Anything.”“We could go home,” Riley offers.Maya squints. “What?”





	

“Please don’t fall asleep,” Riley says. “If you crash now, you’re going to fall into your food, and it’s not going to be fun for either of us.”

Maya glares at her from across the table. They’re having breakfast in the hotel lobby, which is completely empty except for the two of them, both in various stages of waking up - Maya shivering in pajamas and scraping gunk out of her eyes, Riley cursing the sugar that still lingers in her mouth from last night. It’s almost eight, and painfully bright. Riley has to shield her eyes to catch the full brunt of Maya’s crabby expression, made somewhat less frightening by how fast she’s shoveling eggs into her mouth.

“Fine,” Maya grumps, still chewing. She waves her fork offhandedly. “I will try my best.”

Riley watches Maya return to her food and tries not to smile. Her heart is burning a slow beat inside her chest, both anxious and content, and her brain is hazy with the thought of I got lucky. It’s been a weird day. They’re going on 25 hours now, with a lot having happened in a little bit of time. But Maya is here: inhaling bear claws and hash browns, her hair puffy and disheveled, a total mess compared to her usual high school glamour, and it’s… good. It’s good. As the Californians would say, gnarly.

“What’re you staring at?” Maya asks, tilting a brow drily.

“Guess,” Riley says. She sticks a spoon in her muesli and leans back into her chair. Maya watches over her plate. The blue of her eyes is washed out in the light and, combined with the languid flutter of Maya's dark lashes, makes her seem entirely ethereal. Riley bites her lip.

Maya, not an idiot, grins. 

“What are we doing today?” Riley asks. She pushes her bowl away and glances out the window, where the ocean roils just a mile or two away, churning endless silver waves under a sky that’s gone murky and gray. It’s cold and dark outside with only a sliver of sun peeking through, in unsettling contrast to the artificial brightness of the hotel. Maya wolfs down a last bite of her breakfast, throws down her napkin, and shrugs. 

“Up to you,” she says. “Stay another day here. We could go the beach this time, or hiking. Bodega Bay. Oakland, if getting murdered wouldn’t ruin your day. Los Angeles. Disneyland. San Francisco. Anything.”

“We could go home,” Riley offers.

Maya squints. “What?” 

“Home?” Riley presses. She raises her eyebrows, watching Maya’s face twist in confusion, like they’re speaking entirely different languages. “Where we live? Talk to the parents?”

“About?”

Riley gives her an unimpressed look, and Maya scowls in return.

“Fine,” Maya says. She pushes her plate away and gazes at Riley with thinly veiled discomfort. Her eyes seem darker. “You wanna talk to parents? It’s been 25 hours.”

“Maya,” Rowan admonishes, laughing. “Come on. Like you care how long it’s been.”

Maya clicks her tongue disappointedly. Her eyes flash away from Riley, to the ceiling, then the ground, in a fit of obvious discomfort. “Yeah,” she says, with a deep inhale. “Whatever.”

Riley watches for a second. Despite the guilt of seeing Maya so suddenly turned off, she repeats insistently: “So. Thoughts?”

“If you want…” Maya trails off. She rips her gaze away from where it’s fixed on the floor, meets Riley’s eyes, and forces a smile. “Sure.” 

She sounds helpless. Nothing at all like high school royalty, nothing like she did in the car last night as they drove here, vibrant and laughing like a complete idiot, definitely not whoever was in bed with Riley last night, passed out as soon as she hit the pillows with her hand glued to Riley’s waist. This is a totally different Maya, a Maya who has anxiety coming off of her in waves. There’s nothing to be worried about, but the strain in Maya’s voice is obvious, and Riley’s natural instinct is to kiss it away, so she does: leans across the table, wraps her hand in Maya’s shirt, and pulls her in. Against her lips, Riley feels Maya break into a tiny smile. There’s nothing else to ask for. 

*

The pier is almost entirely empty. Maya, hands buried in her pockets, says it’s because of the bad weather; Riley volunteers the fact that it’s only eight on a Saturday morning, and most people are still sleeping. Either way, they’re one of maybe ten people on the visible stretch of beach, and the vacancy of the world around them is disturbing when Riley lays it out in contrast to the feeling of last night. All the lights turned off, the wind harsh, the boardwalk stagnant, the sky gray and welling with the promise of rain, which Maya seems extremely excited by.

“Nerd,” Riley says affectionately, watching Maya rise to her tip-toes and take a deep inhale of the damp air.

“Hey.” Maya frowns, weaves a hand through the air. “After you live here for a while, you’ll understand that this is a special occasion.”

“Special?”

“Mhm.” Maya bumps shoulders with her, conspiratorially. It’s a fleeting touch, but Riley can’t ignored the shudder that rides up her spine and leans into the touch unthinkingly. Maya accepts her weight without question and continues, “It’s almost as good as getting a sale on avocados.”

“What?”

“We’re ridiculous,” Maya explains. 

“Cool.” A dog flashes by them at full speed and rips toward the water, ignoring the owner that’s calling for it in favor of splashing face-first into the waves. Riley beams. She starts toward it, too, wanting just one hug, when a hand grabs for her wrist and pulls her back.

“I hate dogs,” Maya says.

“What?”

“Dogs,” Maya repeats. “I don’t like them.”

Riley’s heart does a genuine flip in her chest. She takes an inhale so deep it squeezes at her ribs, looks Maya up and down to gauge her seriousness, then frowns. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that because I don’t want to break up with you after 26 hours, but you’re awful and wrong and that hurt me.”

“Okay,” Maya says, laughing. “Fine. I’m sorry.”

“Let’s go.” Riley grabs for her hand and starts to pull them towards the parking lot, where Maya’s car has been collecting dust for the past bitterly cold ten minutes. Maya digs her heels into the sand and yanks back until they’re standing chest to chest, close enough that Riley can feel Maya’s breath on her cheeks and see the indecision behind her eyes. Wind swirls hair across her face. “What?”

“You’re pretty,” Maya says. She’s smiling.

Heat floods to Riley’s face, and a grin overcomes her. She squeezes Maya’s hand and pulls it to rest against her cheek, humming happily with the energy that passes between them and sparks like so many microscopic fireworks. Salt sprays in from their left. Maya’s pulse is thrumming so hard that Riley can feel it in her fingertips, a hard, fast, beating reminder of the effect that they have on each other, the power that Riley, in the past 26 hours, has unwittingly obtained.

“You too,” Riley says, almost brimming with affection. The cold is starting to seep into her ribs, but it’s balanced by the influx of warmth coming from inside and the happy thrashing of her heart. Her body hums contentedly. The world, swirled around the two of them in specific, glows like magic.

Then her phone chirps. A hard buzz in Riley’s pocket follows, then another chirp, a buzz, and a trail of notifications going off one after another; her service must have returned, finally. She digs her phone out and gazes at the alerts with a weird level of disconnect. Her feelings are incomprehensible - some level of excitement at seeing how many people have texted, and a simultaneous dread of the incoming real world. “But let’s go.”

“Yup.” Maya presses a quick kiss to her forehead and then starts toward the parking lot. Arcs of sand slough into the air with the scrape of her shoes over the beach. Her jeans are flecked with ocean water, hair stung with salt. Their hands fit perfectly. Riley watches Maya move - the sweet, fluid sway of someone unaware they’re being observed, and, in Maya’s case, ingrained with confidence - inhales deeply, and follows.

*

Riley falls asleep as soon as she hits the passenger seat and wakes up half an hour later bleary-eyed, dry-mouthed, and at a loss for words. The day has become incessantly bright, and wet gray light is shining through the windows and slicing right into Riley’s vision; the causeway is newly surrounded on both sides by dark, brackish trees and a vast expanse of empty grassland running with the influx of muddy water. Cars flare their lights for miles ahead, stuck in place and slick with rain. On her left, Maya is knocked out across the dashboard, forehead rested against the wheel and arms splayed all over the car. Riley shrieks.

“Ah!” Maya bolts upright, almost hitting her head on the roof, and whips around to give Riley a wild-eyed stare, hair frazzled, voice panicked. “What? What?”

“You can’t sleep at the wheel!”

Maya’s face falls. “Oh my God.” She shakes her head, pushes a curl out of her face, then gestures expansively to the backed-up freeway in front and behind them. “We’re not even moving. Oh, you east coast people. Traffic gets stuck for hours here.”

“That’s - you - still,” Riley insists. She’s at a loss for words, caught utterly off-guard by Californian customs. Her family didn’t use cars in New York, but when they did, it was always a mass of speeding metal and people honking and lights changing way too fast - the conglomerate atmosphere so strong it gave Riley anxiety sometimes, turning her pulse to lightning when she had to dash across streets or call for a taxi. “That can’t be safe.”

Maya shrugs. “I wouldn’t say it’s unsafe.”

“I can already tell we have different ideas of safe.”

Maya rolls her eyes, then drops her head to look at Riley sideways, lips curving into a dry, lazy smile. “It’s fine, Riles, really. Don’t worry about it. Do you not like cars?” 

Riley screws up one side of her face and looks across the causeway again. “I guess not? I don’t…not like them. But I just - in New York it always feels like you’re about to get in a crash or get run over if you’re walking. I like public transport more.” She taps one finger against the window. Rain shivers in response on the other side of the glass. “Why?”

“Everyone uses cars here,” says Maya. “I mean, mostly. You might have to get used to it.”

“No promises.”

Maya snorts. 

“What?”

“You’ll definitely have to get used to it. I mean, we have no subway, and the buses are terrifying, and a lot of the places people go are out in like… cornfields, and unless you can fly, the only way to get there is driving.”

“I can fly.”

“Well,” Maya says. “Good for you.”

“Are you really afraid of buses?”

“Maybe not afraid, but I don’t like them. They’re unreliable.”

“Oh. Hmm.” Riley leans forward and looks further out of the windshield. “Traffic is unreliable.”

“But cars don’t break down as often as our buses do,” Maya points out. “And you can take them anywhere, and you don’t have to stop for anyone.”

“I think I’d still stop for people if I had a car.”

“You mean, like, pick up hitchhikers?”

“Yeah.”

“You are going to die young,” Maya huffs.

“So I’ve been told.”

“Young and cute.”

Riley glances over in surprise, but Maya is, of course, looking at the road.

*  
Maybe twenty minutes later, the traffic lets up and they start to move at a regular pace. Ten minutes after that, the highway reopens into all its previous glory, and, feeling unanimously blessed, they hit San Jose cruising at a sweet seventy miles an hour. They’ve been talking about Riley’s transition for a while. How hot she is all the time, the sheer weirdness of bumping into so many hippies on the street, or being taken aback by the level of Spanish that everyone here is expected to know. Maya talks shit about people at school and Riley swoops in to their defense. Gas stations fly past in whirlwinds of neon yellow and red. The coast has disappeared from view, but Riley counts surfboards strapped to the tops of cars and asks questions about Big Sur. They talk constantly and consistently, Maya listening to Riley’s many stories about her big and crazy family, attentive if a little uncomfortable. Music thrums through the car and all the way into Riley’s bones. 

Sparking with the beginning of another conversation, Riley opens her mouth and turns to Maya, then stops short. The sun is blinding by now, and the wind has picked up, swirling Maya’s hair into a golden vortex around her face and deepening the freckles across her cheeks. Her head is thrown back in a laugh, flashing two rows of shiny, perfect teeth. Her eyes are a bright and febrile blue, dark lashes fluttering, gaze screwed up against the light. “What are you looking at?” she laughs, noticing Riley’s stare. 

“I’m glad I met you,” Riley says.

Maya bites her lip and tries to hide a smile. “Mhm,” she says, with one long, serene blink. “Me too.”

*  
“I hate this,” Riley says. “I hate this so much.”

They’ve barely moved in the past hour; after a few blissful minutes of coasting at full speed, cars started to trickle back in, and traffic resumed with a new intensity. Riley is getting tired of looking out the window when the landscape is all so similar. The radio is playing the same three songs on repeat, Maya’s phone is dead, and the atmosphere around them is getting increasingly uncomfortable, the energy maybe tainted by so many angry people around them, or just stagnant after spending so long together. Riley bites her lip and tries not to say anything too emotional in fear of making it worse.

“I-“ Maya starts. Then she stops abruptly. The bay is coming up around them, a serpentine stretch of glassy gray water. She drums her fingers across the wheel, inhales deeply, and whipping all at once to face Riley, tries again - “How do you have such a good relationship with your family?”

Riley’s eyebrows flash upward in surprise. Maya is watching her with a worrying intensity, lips caught between her teeth, concern floating in the blue of her eyes. “I don’t know,” Riley says carefully. “Why?”

“I just…” Maya shrugs haplessly. “Can’t imagine that. It’s - like -“ She inhales grittily, and her lashes flutter. “Like, I can’t see why you would want me to meet your parents, like ever, but especially now. I love my mom, but she - we - don’t always get along, and it’s…” she squints. “Weird to me. I don’t know. Our whole family dynamic, and my dad being gone, it’s weird. I wouldn’t want to bring you into it.”

“Your dad’s gone?”

Maya inhales. “Mhm.”

“Oh.” Riley shifts further back into her seat. “I’m sorry.”

“No, don’t worry about it.” Maya fidgets with her seatbelt, eyes purposefully averted from the weight of Riley staring at her. “I didn’t want to bring it up, anyway, because of…this.“ She gestures vaguely to the space between them. “But, honestly, it doesn’t matter, it’s just, you know. Weird.”  
Riley runs her tongue over her teeth. Maya’s discomfort makes sense, but now Riley has to make sense of how to deal with it, what to say, if she should even insist on going home now. It feels unfair, almost. But Topanga was incredibly lenient last night, and it would be awful of Riley to come home with just some lack-luster explanation of all the magic that happened last night, not the real, living, breathing Maya. And Auggie would love her. And Cory is going to need some time to get used to it. Riley stares out over the flat plastic plane of the dashboard and avoids the heavy feeling that is starting to invade her.

A few seconds of silence pass. Then Maya prods, “What?”

“Nothing,” Riley answers, too immediate to be inconspicuous. Maya’s stare flattens into suspicion, watching Riley’s expressions flit over her face with a hawk-like intensity. “Sorry! I’m sorry. I’m just thinking.”

“I didn’t wanna say anything.” Maya gives the edge of the wheel a half-hearted punch. Heat is rising to her cheeks, stinging her freckles into sharp relief. Frustration permeates the air around her. “I meant, just - so you know.”

“Yeah, of course.” What an asshole thing to say. Riley winces at herself. “I mean - sorry. I get it. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be.” 

“How long can it take to go one mile?”

“So long,” Maya says. “Don’t jinx it.”

*

Riley, being dragged to an early grave by the exhaustion that came with only sleeping only seven hours last night - exactly half of her usual - is just starting to drift off when the car jerks, she slams forward against the seatbelt, and Maya, who has been quiet on her left for a long time in an attempt to focus on navigation, exclaims “FUCK!” with an explosive amount of verve. 

“Wh-“ Riley’s voice falters as she looks up. Fire. Smoke and fire. Not far ahead, a hundred feet, maybe, the bruised skeleton of a car is lit up yellow and red, billowing mantles of exhaust up and away into the hills. Its fender has eaten up a length of guard rail and one of the windows is shattered inward, gone dark but revealed by the telltale glitter of broken glass in the front seat, glittering frenetically with the reflection of flames. One wheel is twisted at a strange angle that forces Riley to recall her last broken bone. The ground is splintered with unnamable car parts, dull and gray or else shining with new red paint, or splashy chunks of seat cushion, pieces of the exoskeleton scraped with new dirt and still spinning across the pavement.

Riley lunges out of her seat and gets yanked back halfway. Maya, baffling as always, has her hand already pressed to Riley’s chest to keep her seated and is reaching to lock the passenger door when Riley notices tries to slap her hand away. “Don’t,” Maya warns. She neatly avoids the sudden strike but doesn’t bother locking the door as Riley glares and then sinks back into her seat. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m not catching you on fire - look.”

The driver of the car has stumbled out, looking a little singed but otherwise okay. Someone closer to the crash has sprinted out to go take care of them, and Riley can see a third person at the edge of the circle, pacing back and forth as they talk animatedly into a phone, she assumes to 911. The sky has gone a translucent gray. 

“Why -“ Riley stops immediately, recognizing the ridiculousness of the upcoming question. Maya wouldn’t know. And the person is fine. And 911 is coming. So there’s nothing to be afraid of. And yet - Riley’s heart is still throbbing in the hollow of her throat, the crunch of it against her bones sickening, and her brain is still hurt and overwhelmed with the impulse to /go help. Riley looks down at the swirl of fabric caught in Maya’s fist, pressed against her chest, and grimaces.

“I’m sorry,” says Maya again, though she really has nothing to apologize for. She’s watching Riley’s face with a worrying intensity. Riley, staring back, shrugs demurely, and, more mild than Maya’s ever seen her, shuffles lower into the cushions of the passenger seat. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” Riley says. She flicks the switch on her door to locked. “I’m fighting the urge.”

Maya’s mouth opens, then falls shut again. Her gaze drops from Riley’s eyes to her lips, then farther, to the length of shirt that’s still seized in Maya’s fist, which she drops awkwardly and instantly upon noticing. Riley squirms. 

“Don’t worry,” Maya says. She shifts back to her regular position, pressed deep into her seat, looking straight out over the freeway with an avoidant intensity. “This happens all the time. Crashes, I mean.”

Riley nods as if she understands. Which she doesn’t.

Maya has instantaneously retreated to the back of her head, to a baseline silence, and Riley doesn’t feel like asking what’s wrong, unsure what answer she’ll be subjected to (if she gets any), but she doesn’t like sitting here, either, steeped in the uncomfortable silence, so she digs her phone out of the glove compartment and clicks it open.

A few minutes pass. Riley says, “I have a question.”

Maya gives her a shifty sideways glance. “…Yes?”

“Aside from being sexy,” Riley asks, barely able to contain her laughter, “What do you do for a living?”  
Maya’s eyebrows furrow. “Wh-“

“Is your name wifi? Because I’m feeling a connection!”

“I -“

Riley interrupts with a huge gasp for breath, then bursts out, almost howling, “YOUR SHIRT LOOKS LIKE IT’S MADE OUT OF GIRLFRIEND MATERIAL!“

“Riley -“

“You look like my future ex-wife -“

Maya slaps a hand across Riley’s mouth before she can get another word out, leans in and says, her voice and expression both excruciatingly sober, “We would not get divorced.”

Then she grins, taps Riley’s cheek twice, and returns to her seat without any more fuss, moving so clearly and quickly it seems like nothing just happened. Riley remains where she sits, stunned to a smile.

*

“Are you not a dog person?”

“Ew,” Maya says. “No.”

They’ve been idling behind of skeleton of the newly crashed car for a while now, the minutes slugging by like hours, and their conversation has devolved into the cute kind of small talk that Riley has missed out on in the lunacy of the past two days. When Maya says “no”, Riley claps a hand to her chest in genuine shock and sputters, blindsided, “What?”

“Dogs,” Maya repeats. “We did this at the beach. I don’t like them.”

“I didn’t believe you the first time.”

“Well, the more you know.”

Riley glares at her. “What other normal, human things do you dislike?”

“PDA?” Maya suggests, scraping one hand mindlessly over the wheel. “Well, in front of people that I know. I don’t like them seeing me all mushy. Is that a problem?” she asks, noting Riley’s sudden discomfort, then continues: “Also, I don’t think God is real, and I don’t think that everybody is good at heart, which you probably do, cause you’re making that face you make when you can’t believe something - right there, that one - so?”

Riley stares back. Her mouth shutters into non complacency. “I…” Despite the nonchalance of Maya’s tone, the casual way she’s throwing out all these insanely important tidbits, Riley’s brain isn’t fooled. It is, in fact, going into overload, caught off-guard by how different they are and how little they know each other. Not that she’s one to judge. But she doesn’t know Maya’s middle name. And, if they’re dating, how is Riley going to get by not holding her hand at school? Panic overtakes her. For a brief moment, maybe, just one hard spike of her heartbeat, a second and a half of out-of-body floating, but enough, the wave of it huge and sharp in her throat. The sun swings from its spot in the sky and refracts huge chunks of light into Riley’s aching eyes. She blinks, hard. They don’t know each other. This was a stupid idea - all of it. Her unflinching optimism, especially, and the fact that she let it cross that line into idiocy. 

Maya brushes a strand of hair from Riley’s face. It’s purposeful and obvious, and Riley leans slightly into her hand, unthinking, vulnerable, missing the brainpower to embarrassed about how mushy she is. Her heart hums, then her whole body. She looks up at Maya and opens her mouth, ready to talk but unsure of what will come out, then stops abruptly. 

Sun is streaming through the windows, lighting up the highlights in Maya’s hair, turning the outline of her face to gold, deepening the freckles on her cheeks, slicing light into the blue of her eyes. Heat is steaming on the pavement outside and everything feels warm and sticky. Maya is gazing back at her, placid, astral, with a sweet, genuine curiosity flitting over her face like moonlight over water. Her paintbrush charm glitters silver in the hard light. Noticing Riley’s stare, she squints, asks “What?”, and, when Riley doesn’t answer, breaks into a confused smile. That makes the butterflies even worse.

“Long run,” Riley manages by way of answer. Maya takes that at face value.

*

They stop off in a town named Cordelia. Riley loves that, the sound or the idea of it - reminiscent of Shakespeare, bringing back the weight of an old book in her hands, bringing back the idea of a difference between love and property. It’s pretty, too, in the Napa wine-town kind of way where the all the streets are laced with half-grown trees, the hills with evenly spaced shocks of grapevines, the buildings with twinkling fairy lights. A small, peaceful beauty. She rolls down her window and sticks her head out into the clean air as Maya takes them coasting down the tiny main street, hair whipping around her face, inhaling the smell of freshly paved roads and greenery sprouting at every corner.

“What do you wanna eat?” Maya shouts out to her, turning down their music with one flailing hand. “There’s a lot here - “

Riley slides back into her seat, shoves a cloud of hair off her forehead. An exhilarated smile is still plastered over her face. “Mexican?”

“We do do it well.”

There’s a hole-in-the-wall taqueria with bright orange walls down the next street, so Maya pulls into the nearest parking lot and drags her in to order; Riley is halfway through a veggie burrito when she finally has to slam down her food and insist, “My family is great.”

“Mm,” says Maya, picking a piece of lettuce out of her teeth. “Can’t disagree.”

“No, you doofus,” Riley sighs, “Listen to me. They’re gonna love you.”

“Oh, this.”

“Yes, this! They’re important to me and I want you to meet them and I don’t know why you don’t want to do something that - “

“I’m not ready to disappoint you.”

“What are you talking about?” Riley searches Maya’s face for some hint of a joke and finds nothing. The blonde stares back at her, jaw clenched, entirely serious, and shifts back an inch in her seat, obviously intimidated by the heaviness of the situation. Her eyes flash in the hard light, more like a scared animal than anything dangerous. When she breathes in it’s almost ragged. “Hello?”

I meant exactly what I said,” Maya defends, eyebrows furrowing. “You don’t even know me that well, and I never make a good impression on parents, and that’s obviously important to you. I’m not avoiding things forever, but I mean, one weekend, how sure can you be that - “

“Shut up,” Riley laughs. “I know you plenty. You’re cute and you’re funny and you don’t have any reason to be nervous, okay? If I like you then they will. And, I mean, as long as you’re willing to do it, I don’t really care how it goes - I’ll already know you’re worth it. More than I do now.”

Maya stares. Then she smiles, very slightly. 

They pay and leave. The sky is a beautiful, hazy pink outside, lined with nothing more than the mere suggestion of clouds. Trees bend slightly in the wind, shedding pale green leaves and white flowers so young they still have woody stems.The world remains eighty degrees and breezy as they twirl back to Maya’s car, steps mismatched on the concrete, a two-bodied collection of semi-intertwined parts, half of that collection Riley laughing into her phone as she promises Topanga that yes, they’ll be home soon, and yes, Maya is coming, too.

**Author's Note:**

> :)!
> 
> sapphicriley.tumblr.com


End file.
